Albert Greene (born April 13, 1946),[1] better known as Al Green, is an Americangospel and soul music singer. He reached the peak of his popularity in the 1970s, with hit singles such as “You Oughta Be With Me”, “I’m Still In Love With You”, “Love and Happiness”, and “Let’s Stay Together”.[2] In 2005, Rolling Stone named him #65 in their list of the ‘100 Greatest Artists of All Time’. The nomination, written by Justin Timberlake, stated that “people are born to do certain things, and Al was born to make us smile.”[3] The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Green in 1995, referring to him as “one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music.” Green has sold more than 20 million records.[2]

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles.
Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures.
A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.

If you’re interested in pushing back against the distortions, lies, and misinformation served up on a daily basis by the media, here’s your chance! Peter M, who frequents The People’s View (TPV) and BlackWaterDog (aka The Only Adult in the Room) has compiled a comprehensive contact list that can be used to let media outlets know EXACTLY how we feel about their slanted and biased programming, which is intended to demean the President and his administration. Please use it…there’s strength in numbers~

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, PETER M~

That said, I think you all need to contact the networks and highlight the GOP connection. Mitt was conspicuously silent during the debt ceiling debate; then we heard of a nefarious outfit dropping a million dollars into his election campaign and then it disbanded. Now we hear that the man in charge of S&P is Mitt’s friend and supporter. This is a political hit job in the least. Contact networks and hammer the GOP connection.

There’s been a campaign going on around the blogosphere for awhile, advocating that MSNBC ban Pat Buchanan from appearing on the network. Buchanan is a political analyst, who, in the wake of the tragedy in Norway, wrote an editorial, which appeared to rationalise, if not favour, the motives of the assassin in question, Anders Behring Breivik. If that were not enough, Buchanan dug himself into a deeper hole, when he appeared as a guest on Rev Al Sharpton’s new MSNBC progam, and made reference to the President, using a term with echoes the collective periods of time encompassing the Antebellum South right up through the era of Civil Rights struggles. You can watch the incident, which occurs at about the five-minute mark here.

~snip~

But, rightly, politely and forcefully, Rev Sharpton upbraided him on this slip-of-the-tongue. When Pat referred to the President as “your boy, Barack Obama,” the reverend was ready:-
He’s nobody’s boy– he’s your president, he’s our president, and that’s what ya’ll don’t get through your head. Rev Sharpton, that’s what a lot of people don’t get through their heads.

The next night, Lawrence O’Donnell, had as his guest, Arianna Huffington. I’ve followed Huffington’s career for about thirty years. She’s the privleged daughter of a corrupt Greek politician, whose family fled Greece in the socialist coup of the early 1960s. Huffington, nee Stanisopoulos, is a prime example of someone who has used money and sex to climb both the social and professional ladders. Following her academic career at Cambridge, she expected to be welcomed with opened arms into the British political media, most of whom are traditionally centre-Leftish; but Huffington was so far to the Right in those days, she made Phyllis Schlafly look like a weeping Nellie atheist. She wrote a couple of books, and got sued for extensive plagiarism in one of them. In fact, plagiarism follows Huffington like a lost puppy, as does unethical journalistic methods.

~snip~

Also, during the 90s, Arianna developed a penchant for Newt Gingrich and a pathological hatred for all things Clinton. She contributed to George W Bush’s Presidential campaigns, not once, but twice, and suddenly woke up on the morning of November 3, 2004, the day Dubya officially became Lame Duck plus three, and experienced a full-on Damascene conversion, declaring herself no longer a neocon, but a 100% dyed-in-the-wool Progressive. No questions asked, no details given, the shallow and insipid 24/7 news media accepted her as the new and fully-fledged voice of the Left.

In another space and time, she would have been called a ratfucker, because since Barack Obama’s inauguration, she’s worked steadily and consistently to ructure irreparably the Left. It was she, as well as Jane Hamsher, who made sure that the Firebaggers (who inhabit the opposite side of the political coin from the Teabaggers, but who share with them a single brain cell) were sufficiently conflicted to believe that the President was weak, spineless, a tool of Wall Street, a closet Republican, a war mongerer, an enemy of the people, especially the Middle Class.

In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Midterms, she trolled the United States, being given almost unlimited airtime on MSNBC, to tell all and sundry of the middle class that “the President just isn’t that into you.” Almost as much as Ed Schultz, another ex-neocon rapidly converted to progressivism, she was instrumental in ensuring that people on the Left, who should have voted, sulked out the vote and gave us the Tea Party Congress we loathe and detest today – and all the while, referring to the President as “nowhere man.”

Last night, she set up her shingle on O’Donnell’s show, to talk about the debt ceiling agreement, and immediately offered this choice titbit about the President:- I think he needs intense therapy, to explain to himself first of all why he did what he did, because there is no rational explanation. All said with that maliciously sweet butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth smile plastered to her greasy, botoxed face.

That was a pernicious remark, which exhibited the utmost contempt and disrespect for this man. She’s a nasty piece of work, totally without tact or class. A person whom, in the words of Oscar Wilde, knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. She is, above all, the embodiment of white privileged elitism, from the debutante daughters to the flaunting of her own brand for her own purposes. Oh, and she still cahoots with Newt.

But what dismayed me the most about the entire segment of the O’Donnell show is the way the host let her spew her disrespectful venom without once taking her to task….

~snip~

I guess the question we are left to ponder is why Rev Sharpton was quick and right to call out blatant disrespect, and Lawrence O’Donnell wasn’t?

Okay Y’all, I’m on a roll today. As you guys (3Chics) have elequently pointed out, this budget and debt ceiling mess, is nothing more than a roost (smoke screen). It’s whole purpose is to pave a road to the 2012 election. The congress (and we know who I am talking about, had nothing to lose. Their pockets are full and they, personally, wasn’t going to lose a damn thing if the freaking Stature Of Liberty came crashing down. They wasn’t worried about a pay check, nor did they care about a America’s credit rating. Their, whole motive/purpose was confusion and destruction… pointed at that black man.

Okay, here we go, first, President Obama has a huge weight on his shoulders and so did my grandfather. At the beginning of their new voyage, each of them were up against the mighty Goliath. A formidable foe for sure. Sticks and stones could break their bones, but that was the least of their worries.

In 1865, my grandfather (above picture) of six generations past, was released from slavery. Since that time, there has been 28 white gentlemen seated as President of The United States. Over Fifty Three Thousand days ago, since my grandfather was released from slavery, except for approximately 900 measly days, there has been a white gentlemen sitting in the White House. For approximately EIGHTY THOUSAND DAYS, there has always been a white gentlemen sitting in the White House.

Lets move ahead a few years.

[Image]That little girl is my mother. Her parents didn’t have an easy row to hoe. They had 10 children and were sharecroppers, but that didn’t stop them from taking the time to dress my mother in her fine Sunday attire. The landowner wasn’t very nice. Some of the other sharecroppers bowed to his wishes and helped him brow beat his tenants. However my grandparents knew they had to keep on, keeping on.

Come on, lets move ahead.

[Image]
My mother made it through those days on the farm. That’s her in the middle, with the glove on her thigh. Her life has not been a cake walk. Well, aside from being a black woman in America, the next picture will tell a more complete story.

[Image] She had me and my brothers. I am the confused looking guy on the left. Although I didn’t have a nice bow tie like my oldest brother or a fancy pair of shoes like my brother in the middle, I am grateful for my mother and all my grandparents. My brothers and I fought amongst ourselves but we always fought harder for each other. If someone threw a rock at one of us, we threw 10 back at them. My grandmother is in the next picture.

[Image]Look at her, she’s so proud. She made it through the hard times, and she’s standing in the middle of a few good black men as they break ground for our new church. But the church wasn’t about her, she was building something to pass down. She passed away a few years after this picture was taken. But if she had listened to some of the other naysay sell-out sharecroppers, the following event might not have taken place. She and my grandfather stayed strong, stayed together, pooled their resources and got off that man’s property.

Image] It’s our family reunion! Grandma ironed a few white people’s clothes and so did her mother, and so did my mother, but they didn’t let that stop them.

My father lost his dad at an early age, but he didn’t let that stop him either. In the next picture, see if you know where he’s standing?

[Image]That’s my father standing in front of the White House. Since 1789, there had been a white man living in that white house. Our president is now a black man. He’s only been living there for a little more than 700 days. Forty three white fellas had called that place home. In their tenure, they managed to keep racism alive, and hope but a distant memory. For 80,000 days and several wars later, they’ve managed to build a castle in the sky for them and theirs, and yet, a few of my black friends are quick to point fingers at President Obama. They say he’s not moving fast enough and he’s staying mum on black issues. I wonder if my nay say friends can trace their family history, or the white president’s history? I also wonder if they’ve read a few history books – about our history? More importantly, I’ve often wondered what rewards they are receiving from regurgitating negative opinions about our president? Could it be they adore speaking in a quasi intellectual tone, while missing the fact that they are being ineffectual? Frequently, their misguided “constructive criticism” is nothing more than 10 dollar words of bubbling babble that’s used to stroke an inflated ego.

My father has gone home. I miss him, but I remember his words of wisdom.

He was my little league coach and I was a pitcher. One day, a player on my team dropped a fly ball which caused me to lose my cool. As he scrambled to retrieve the ball, another player stumbled over him. The opposing team laughed and ridiculed the players to a point they both started crying. I didn’t make things any better with my mean look and foolish antics on the mound. Consumed by my emotions, I threw my next pitch with the fury of a Tasmanian Devil. I hit the batter square upside his head. My father called time out and approached the mound. His following words I will never forget… “look boy, don’t ever play another man’s game and don’t be nobodies fool. Their job is to get you mad at your players and have you act a damn fool. Don’t let them see you get rattled. Go out and tell Tommy it’s alright and we are going to win this game. We don’t need enemies on our own team”

President Obama has a huge task in front of him. He’s standing on the mound and the ball is in his hand. We don’t need enemies on our own team. If someone tries to engage you in negative criticism about President Obama, stop, look and listen, and then ask them where they are going? Don’t play another man’s game and don’t be nobodies fool.

Remember, Rome was not built in a day and 43 white fellas have played in the white house for over TWO CENTURIES – THAT’S 200 YEARS YAWL! And that’s a loooog time. Taking that into consideration, President Obama has been there but a blink of the eye. My grandfather didn’t go back to slavery. He took the good with the bad, and kept on steppin. Step up… when someone tries to bring Obama down.

Lets build something to pass on! I say, move the petty indifferences out of the way and look ahead to a better day. If not Obama then who? Don’t be led astry.
ONE MO TIME….. WE DON’T NEED ENEMIES ON OUR OWN TEAM.

Opulent, that’s a great possibility and I’ll tell you why. I am in production of a one person play… Detentively titled (working title) “Kingfish, his Life and Times”. Well, as I mentioned in that post, I can trace my 5th generation grandfather back to his birth as a slave. He came north as part of a Union Colored Infantry during the Civil War. He was stationed on an Island, now known as Arsenal Island. It’s a small military base in the Mississippi River, between Iowa and Illinois. Okay now, my grandfather had a few offspring, and one of them was the gentleman that played Kingfish on the old 1952 television series Amos n’ Andy. Yep, he’s my grandfather’s brother. I have many stories and lots of pictures. He didn’t get that part until late in his career. Some of those fat heads in the NAACP were instrumental in getting the series banned from television, and now we have Mr. Brown and Medea… go figure. And who wins all the image awards, Tyler who? Yeah, go figure. I wonder if Tyler’s money has any influence on black folk’s state of affairs? And who can forget shufflin’ jive talkin’ George Jefferson and Flip Wilson’s Geraldine? Anyway, back then, at a time of emerging Civil Rights, the characters were seen as gullible, conniving and lazy. Looking at the show today, none of the plots were ever based on race; and in fact, Blacks were seen for the first time as doctors, lawyers and leaders in the community. The problem was in the balance. There were simply no other shows during that time period to compare against the characters on Amos ‘n Andy. Civil Rights leaders saw Amos ‘n Andy as “inappropriate”, saying that it had to be taken off the air.

On a side note, you know I am from Iowa – right? Well, some “good” white folks were pushing to have Tim (that’s his name) selected to a sort of who’s who from the area. Well, the core of this selection committee are Jewish historians (You know they will document some ish). So, through their tireless journey, I found out how and when my family arrived in this area; the birth place of “Kingfish“. The story goes back to 1862. My grandfather – of 5 generations past – as I said, was a released slave and came to the banks of Iowa and Illinois to fight for his country (yeah, another story) . I have a picture of him sitting with a group of distinguishing looking white fellows, all of them wearing hats and their Sunday best, including my grandfather. He was an integral part of their society because he was the town’s animal doctor. He didn’t have a PhD, but as a slave, that was his job. So they needed ol’Charlie. That was his name, Charlie W; a released slave from Kentucky. So Opulent, in short, Kingfish is my uncle and there are hundreds of us running around since 1865. Heck, Uncle Tim (Kingfish) had 6 brothers and 3 sisters and he was born in 1893. So do the math and think about the birds and the bees, and think about offsprings, and one dark fella might pop out that went to UofM, and I believe I know which one you are talking about. And if it’s the one I am thinking of ( in one of those pictures) he is now living in Plano Texas. Him and his wife are both HNIC school administrator :-). And oh yeah, he once was the mayor of a small (75,000) Midwestern city.

My wonderful BROTHA, careycarey; so good to see you! Been out all day attending wedding nups. Thank you so much for sharing your family history and journey. Loved how you put it all into perspective with the politics and PBO. We’re going to keep on PUSHIN’, umm umm ummm, CAN’T STOP NOW!

Oooh…right on time to complement the post that precedes this. Here’s a post by Norbrook which probably expresses how many of us feel. Thank you, Norbrook!

I Will Listen to the Frustrati When

After a few years of listening to the general screaming, moaning, bitching, whining, and intermittent chest-beating of the so-called progressives, I’ve decided to give a list of things that would actually cause me to pay any serious attention to them. It’s not by any means a comprehensive list, just a fairly short list of things they should have been doing to get serious attention by anyone, including politicians.

I will listen to you when you:

Demonstrate the ability to successfully lobby for and shepherd through Congress a bill meeting your standards.

Identify and recruit primary challengers to members of the Blue Dog caucus, and provide them with the financial support, campaign staff, and field support needed to win that primary.

Demonstrate that you can get local candidates on the ballot and win in a number of areas around the country.

Can turn out a reliable block of voters who make a difference in an election, in more than just a few select urban areas that were going your way anyway.

Start acknowledging when the President does something right, and stop blaming him for things he had no control over.

Start going after Republicans with the vigor you’ve been using on Democrats.

None of them are particularly “unusual” if you plan on being a political force. They’re all standard things that any politically influential group does as a matter of course. It’s the way they became political forces in the first place. Which is exactly what the various “progressive” complainers who call themselves “the netroots” haven’t done. For all the noise they make, they’ve never once demonstrated an ability to do any of the above.

They want to be listened to? To be taken seriously? The above list is a beginning. I’ll listen when they show they can do more than talk. I’m not going to be holding my breath, though.

Okay my 3chics and all your friends, it’s me CareyCarey, stopping by to see what’s really going on. And while I am here, I’d like to send a shout-out to some of our own… ah, well, check this:

FEAR AND FAITH CAN NOT CO-EXIST IN THE SAME HEART: Negros Gone Wild

Lippy The Lion & Hardy Har Har are a pair of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, a lion in a tattered top hat and vest, and a hiena in a pork pie hat and bow tie, respectfully. Hardy is the eternal pessimist that suffers from a major depressive disorder. Lippy, on the other hand, was the stereotype of someone in which hope springs eternal, hence, “lippy”.

Their cartoons revolved around ever-hopeful Lippy with reluctant Hardy serving as his sidekick. Whatever their journey, Hardy’s words were always the same “Oh me, oh my, oh dear”. Hardy had little faith. Consequently, he always lived in fear.

Let’s see, you make the call; are you Judas, Brutus or Hardy Har Har , or can I depend on you?
Well, here’s where I am at today.

There are few things that I really hate, but I can not stand monkey see monkey do negros that proclaim they are standing with you, side by side, shoulder to shoulder in troubling time, yet at the first sign of trouble, they are gone like a turkey through the corn. And, of course, they frequently take along like minded fence straddlers.

Let me explain. Here we are at the near end-point of president Obama’s first term in office. I am reminded of his message of change and the words of – what has turned out to be – his quasi supporters. You know, the ones that have taken off their badge of courage and exposed the underbellies of their real nature; a stankin pig and a funky black cat. You know the story… “Who will help me make the bread“ he asked?… “Not I,” said the pig. . … .“Not I,” said the cat. … “Then I’ll do it myself,” sputtered the baker.

For sure, all the funky black cats, stinking pigs and Hardy Har Har’s of the world are now crying “oh me, oh my, oh dear” as they jump on their new bandwagon of “I told you so”. I’ve been seeing their Step n Fetchit asses as they throw down their signs of “we shall overcome”, and then, pickup their new sign “massa, can we come back home”

Change came, but their hearts and their fears were not ready for the the new-jack racism and cunning ways of Obama‘s detractors that have raised their ugly heads. It was always there – yet somewhat dormant – but now alive and kicking. So now all the funky black pigs have taken on the persona of their master. They bemoan the alleged errs of President Obama in an attempt to fall back in the ever so comfortable graces of their beloved Mr. Charlie.
The harshest criticism always seems to come from those that have no idea of the political process, nor the duties or restrictions of the presidency, and truly have no gift of their own. And are the epitome of a do or die cynic that’s just plain pissed off at their station in life. That is of course, unless you’re making the world a little more ugly, then that type of personality, will gladly hold your hand and dance through the stankin muck filled trappings of life, proclaiming that you, just like they, see only how awful it all is, but take pleasure in the celebration of it. Lord knows we’ve heard their pitiful cries… “lets get rid of Obama, we need change”. Negro please, didn’t I here that before? But now your ass wants to scurry backwards on the underground railroad.

Btw, you know (don’t you) the braves slaves, while traveling through the underground byways, shot the weakling slave that wanted to turn around. They couldn’t risk the chance of them persuading other slaves that bondage was the light. More importantly, there is no doubt the weak slave – back peddling slave – upon arriving back at his place of comfort would point fingers at the escaping slaves and sing…

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land whar I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

“I was born by the river in a little tent. Oh and just like the river I’ve been running ever since. It’s been a long, a long time coming. But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will. It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die, cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky. It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will. I go to the movie and I go downtown, somebody keep telling me don’t hang around. But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will. Then I go to my brother and I say brother help me please, but he winds up knocking me back down on my knees!”

Many people fear nothing more terrible than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody — Rev Martin Luther King, Jr.
Yes, it’s true, fear and faith can not co-exist in the same heart and some negros fear the mountain. They will never find the faith to say “verily I say unto you, who so ever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt, and it shall be done”

Even the cowardly lion found the strength to pass through the yellow brick road.

Since the Bush years, government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Council on Economic Advisers, and Department of Transportation have been calculating the economic costs of the damage caused by carbon dioxide emissions and the resulting climate change. Depending on who’s running the calculation and their methodology (economic modeling based on projected growth, climate behavior, and related physical damages), these estimates currently range from $5.50 and $72 per ton of CO2. A new report, however, says that these estimates are way too low.

After running an independent analysis, Economics for Equity and Environment (E3), the network of economists that published the report (PDF), found that in 2010, one ton of CO2 in the atmosphere did up to $893 in economic damage—more than 12 times the government’s highest estimate. By 2050, the group says, these costs could rise up to $1,550 per ton of CO2 emitted. (A ton of CO2 is approximately what you release into the atmosphere by driving a car for two-and-a-half months.) While the government agencies acknowledge that their estimates are “imperfect and incomplete,” E3 says they also omit “many of the biggest risks associated with climate change” and downplay “the impact of our current emissions on future generations.”

“If you’re younger than 26, you have never seen a month where the global mean was as cold as the 161 year average,” observes Robert Grumbine. In contrast, “there are no periods as long as even 20 years of continual below reference temperatures.” He finds that the period 1880-1940 seems to best represent a stable long-term average for global temperatures. If that’s the case, then the “last time the global mean was below the climate normal was March, 1976. If you’re 35 or younger, you have never seen a global mean below climate’s real normal.”

Of course, the clusterf**k has already begun with the Teahadists and talking heads attempting to shift the blame to President Obama. Never gets old…but I guess that’s because so many people continue to believe whatever is said without looking at the facts.

At Her Founding, America Had Almost 1 Trillion Dollars of Debt
By Ray Medeiros
July 31, 2011

The tea party and in fact many conservatives love to embrace the Constitution and the flag. Unfortunately they FAILED to embrace U.S history at the same time. Within the next couple of days the United States will become a dead beat nation because of the very small minority of ideological conservative tea party members. These individuals have embraced the constitution, not because they know what is in it, but because it is “politically expedient”. In the 14th Amendment section 4 it states:

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The United States of America was FOUNDED on debt. Yes, we had debt in the amount of 75,463,476.52 by January 1, 1791 according to the bureau of public debt. Without debt, the country would have NEVER won independence and thus NEVER become the country we know today. When you adjust for inflation, 75.4 million dollars in 1800 is almost ONE TRILLION in 2010.
The United States had an almost ONE TRILLION dollars debt when this country was born. This debt was almost paid off by the mid 1800s, not because of austerity, but because of economic growth. The founders of the United States did not like debt, but obviously understood that debt is a necessary evil. In times of war, we submitted to this evil, like in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

By the end of President Clinton’s term, the United States had a projected annual surplus and we were going to pay down our national debt. That all changed back in 2001 when the Republicans won the Presidency, US House of Representatives, split the US Senate. Instead of being fiscally responsible and using this surplus to do pay down the debt, the Republican House, and split Senate supported to ignore the debt and give a huge tax break instead.

The recent Washington agreement to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for budget cuts has created a historic opportunity for deep cuts in projected military spending–cuts that would help prevent future wars. By Thanksgiving, a joint House-Senate committee is supposed to recommend $1.5 trillion in cuts in projected spending over 10 years. Most of these cuts can come from the projected military budget.

Urge the President and your representatives in Congress to put the projected military budget first in line for cuts. [Please click on the link in order to address your message to the appropriate recipient, we need to identify where you are….]

I’m not angry often. I don’t believe anger is an emotion that makes things better for anyone but yourself, and even that is rare. This is generally a political blog, and in politics, anger is poisonous. I can’t say this enough; the average voter in this country (NOT voters on either extreme side of the political spectrum, but those who actually decide elections) is NOT motivated by anger, cannot be motivated by anger (usually), and actually reacts to expressed anger with disgust, for the most part. They don’t want to elect angry people, they want to elect competent people. They don’t care what WE think the issues are; they want to elect someone who knows and understands the issues and will do something about it.

Put simply, the general public already thinks all politicians suck, so you reiterating that politicians suck does nothing to advance the political process. But I’m becoming angry with the far left these days, not just because they’re being unfair to the president and the Democrats, but because they pose as political “experts,” despite the fact that they seem to know nothing about how politics actually works. Let’s start this rant by reminding you that the man occupying the White House currently got to where he is in spite of the fact that:

He is a black man;
He had a father who was a Kenyan Muslim;
He has an unusual name;
He didn’t have a ton of political experience when he ran and;
He had to beat one of the most established legacies in Democratic politics in the primary, and a respected war hero politician in the general election.

Barack Obama could very well be the most brilliant politician of our day. He knows what’s up far better than we do. To NOT defer to his judgment except in extreme circumstances is much like hiring a mechanic to repair your car and then telling him how (s)he should rebuild your carburetor. Put simply, if you think you can do it better, then do it. Otherwise, shut the hell up, because you sound stupid when you criticize an expert.

That is why all of you Monday morning quarterbacks out there – those of you who are constantly going on about how big a screw-up Obama is, and how he “should have” done something that YOU think would have “worked better” — just look pathetic. Seriously, you look sillier than shit, and it’s pissing most liberals off, because you’re affecting the discourse, and you’re making it more difficult to beat the right wing, which absolutely MUST be our first order of business for the next several election cycles. Pardon my French, but FUCK the Blue Dogs. THEY are NOT the problem. The problem is the extreme right, who are hell-bent on dismantling this country, one brick at a time.

All these “woulda coulda shoulda” outbursts coming from some of you demonstrate nothing more than an incredible political naiveté that is absolutely vomit-inducing. Seriously, many of you sound like that blowhard uncle we all have, who’s an expert on every goddamn thing, despite the fact that he can’t seem to find a job that pays more than $10 an hour. The people I’m talking about NEVER seem to read actual news stories, and they rarely deal with actual facts. Instead, they watch talking head shows, take everything that fits their current belief system, and discard everything else.

Sound familiar? Yep, you’re right. Some of these folks act the same way toward left wing talking heads that the right wing does with theirs. And it’s not smart. “Absorbing more information” only makes you smarter if you bother to verify the information you’re given, and you also put it into a proper perspective. And as is my tendency with this blog, I’m going to give specific examples of what I mean. That makes me different than most bloggers, who make sweeping proclamations that are unsupported by any sort of reality. These are memes pushed by the far left on blogs and in comments, and they’re just plain STUPID. And I’m showing you why they’re stupid.

With a lot of luck, we may finally take decisive action to guarantee decent treatment for the world’s highly exploited housekeepers, maids, nannies, and other domestic workers. There are an estimated 100 million of them, working in more than 180 countries. Their pay is generally at the poverty level, and very few have fringe benefits such as pensions and employer-paid health care. Few have the protection of unions or labor laws, and they’re often at the mercy of unscrupulous labor contractors. Almost half of them are not entitled to even one day off per week. About a third of the female workers are denied maternity leave. The hope for improving the domestics ‘slavery-like conditions has arisen from action taken in Geneva this month at the annual meeting of the United Nation’s International Labor Organization – the ILO.

Delegates representing unions, employers and governments voted 396 to 16 for what’s called a “Convention on Domestic Workers.” The nonbinding convention spells out how domestics should be treated in UN member countries – most importantly in the pace-setting United States. In the US, as in most other countries, an estimated 80 percent of the domestics are women of color, subject to racial discrimination and physical and sexual abuse. In the United States, most of them are immigrants as well . They’re easy targets for exploitation, especially since, as elsewhere, domestics mainly work in private, unregulated households, usually alone. What’s more, US domestics lack most of the protections of state and federal labor laws that are granted most US workers outside of agriculture. Most other non-agricultural workers at least have the right to unionize. But domestics don’t even have that basic right….

A few months ago I wrote a piece for the magazine arguing that the decline in unionization over the past three decades has been a key factor of the decline of the American left over the same period. But it’s a hard case to prove because there are so many moving parts to it. So I was intrigued earlier this week when my colleague Josh Harkinson linked to a new study that attempts to quantify the effects of unionization on income inequality using a rigorous regression analysis of census data.

The study comes from Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld and was published this month in the American Sociological Review. The authors use a model that accounts for both individual membership in unions as well as overall unionization rates in specific industries and regions. It also controls for education, age, race, ethnicity, and gender, which allows them to estimate the effect of unionization both between groups (e.g., the evolution of income inequality between high school dropouts and high school grads) and within groups (e.g., the evolution of income inequality within the entire subset of high school grads).

Once their model was in place, Western and Rosenfeld could manipulate their variables to estimate what income inequality would look like if union density had remained at its 1973 level. So what did they find? Answer: Among men, if you account only for the effect of individual membership in unions, it would be about a fifth lower, which agrees pretty well with previous estimates. But if you also account for the effect of unions on surrounding nonunion employers (who often raised wages to compete with union employers and to avert the threat of unionization in their own workplace), the effect is larger: Unionization at 1973 levels would decrease income inequality by a full third. You can see this in the chart below. For intragroup differences (which account for nearly the entire effect of unionization) the top line shows the actual rise of income inequality since 1973, while the red line is a prediction of what it would look like if union density were still at 1973 levels:

The effect of unionization on women is less dramatic because women were never unionized at the same rate as men. For them, increasing returns to education are a bigger factor in rising income inequality than deunionization. For men, however, deunionization has had a huge impact: “The decline of the US labor movement has added as much to men’s wage inequality as has the relative increase in pay for college graduates,” the authors say.

Today, 34 ACLU affiliates are filing 379 public records requests in 31 states around the nation, seeking information about how our local law enforcement agencies are using our cell phone location information to track us. Chances are you’re walking around with a tracking device in your purse or pocket – a cell phone. Location data from your cell phone can make it easy to get directions or locate the nearest coffee shop, leaving no doubt that your cell phone knows where you are. Even if you use a dumb phone, cell phones constantly send out signals searching for the nearest cell tower in order to make sure your calls actually go through – and companies can estimate your location based on your proximity to nearby towers with ever-improving accuracy. The amount of time they store this information, and in how much detail, depends on the cell phone provider. (Remember the public outrage over Apple’s surreptitious storage of iPhone and iPad user’s location information a few months ago?)

[Check out our interactive map to see what agencies we’ve requested records from in YOUR state!]

What’s revealed by this perpetual tracking can be intensely personal; as a court recently found, one’s location might reveal “whether he is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”Okay, I hear you thinking, “Right, but I’m not a criminal. Why should I care?” Think again. Law enforcement’s use of cell phone location data has been widespread for years. In fact, just last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Matthew Olsen, current general counsel for the National Security Agency and President Obama’s nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center, whether the government can use cell phone location data to track Americans in the United States. Olsen replied, “There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist.” Cagey much?

This week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would invest $30 million from his own pocket to uplift the young black and Latino men who are most excluded from New York’s civic, educational and economic life. While this proposal is generous, it fails to address the fact that the Bloomberg administration has supported policies that have led to staggering racial disparities in New York’s corrections system. While funding job recruitment and education programs is indeed important, there’s a critical missing piece in this grand plan: ending NYPD’s widespread aggressive stop and frisk policies that target communities of color at skyrocketing rates and contribute markedly to the marginalization of the very same communities Bloomberg now aims to help.

In 1990, the NYPD stopped and frisked 41,438 people. In 2009, that number ballooned to 576,394. In fact, over the 3 1/2 years leading up to 2009, the NYPD initiated over 1.6 million stops of New Yorkers. Communities of color have had to bear the brunt of this intrusive and often humiliating police practice — in particular, the same young men the Bloomberg administration’s new plan seeks to assist. Of the stop-and-frisks that the police carried out last year, 84 percent were of African-Americans and Latinos. Eighty-five percent of blacks and Latinos who were stopped were also frisked, compared to 8 percent of white people. And most of these stops were of innocent people — from 2005 through the first half of 2008, only 4 to 6 percent of all NYPD-initiated stops resulted in arrest.

Not coincidentally, the percentage of African-Americans and Latinos who are stopped and frisked by the NYPD mirrors the racial disparities of our city’s jails. According to data from the Bloomberg administration, 84 percent of the people held in the city’s detention facilities are African-American or Latino, even though the populations of young white, black and Latino men in New York are roughly equal. In addition to stopping tens of thousands of innocent people of color, the city spent over $75 million last year to arrest and charge over 50,000 people for possession of low-level marijuana — 86 percent of whom are black or Latino. Indeed, more people were arrested for marijuana possession in New York than in any other city in the world.

Compare this to 1991, when the number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests stood at just 774. Bloomberg’s pledge to contribute to new programs aimed at helping minority youth is generous, but until NYPD’s counterproductive policies are addressed, taxpayers will continue to make their own hefty contribution to police practices that harm the communities that most need support.

Dems Take On Panetta For Pushing Medicare, Social Security Cuts Over Defense Cuts
By: Brian Beutler

A fight is brewing on the right, between anti-tax zealots and big military types over who takes the next hit in the continuing fight over deficits. The prospect excites progressives, who see a rare opportunity to force the GOP to slaughter one of their sacred cows, and rip the party apart in the process. But the left is poised for a similar internal battle. The tensions on both sides of the aisle were set in motion by the debt deal, which created a powerful, bipartisan deficit committee tasked with finding over $1 trillion in savings over the next 10 years. If it gridlocks, though, it will trigger automatic spending cuts, including about half a billion dollars from defense.

If Democrats demand higher tax revenues as the price of any bipartisan deal, Republicans will have to choose whether to accept them (and alienate a huge chunk of the party) or reject them in favor of the defense cuts (and alienate a huge chunk of the party). Enter Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who yesterday complicated the Democrats’ calculus. “We’re already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough,” Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday. “I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense.”

He said savings need to come from entitlement programs and from higher taxes — not further defense cuts. In effect, that puts the six Democrats who will soon be appointed to the committee on notice: don’t screw around with this. Democrats are now demanding clarity from the White House: does President Obama think Medicare and Social Security can be cut by $500 billion over 10 years, but the bloated defense budget can not? Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) put the question to Obama in a Friday letter. “I urge you to make clear that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did not speak for the Administration when he stated yesterday that additional spending cuts, beyond those in the recent debt-ceiling agreement, should come from non-discretionary spending such as Social Security and Medicare while the military budget is spared,” Frank wrote.

The House Ethics Committee has cleared Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY) of charges that he took out an inappropriate loan he received from a businessman but is still investigating whether he disclosed it properly. Likewise, the panel exonerated Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) of any wrongdoing in accepting $500,000 in legal services from the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund, a Turkish-American interest group, even though they found them to be improper gifts under House rules and are demanding she repay the attorneys. The committee also decided against pursuing an investigation into Rep. Luis Guiterrez’ July 26 arrest during a immigration protest in front of the White House. Guiterrez paid a $100 fine for failing to obey a lawful order of a policeman.

In the matters involving Meeks and Schmidt, the House Ethics Committee was acting on recommendations made by the Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi-independent body tasked with looking into allegations against members and furthering their findings on to the full ethics panel for further review. Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a formal ethics complaint against Meeks last summer over allegations he failed to disclose $40,000 he received from a businessman in the state. Meeks repaid the $40,000 personal loan, but only after the FBI started looking into the transaction.

How to Take Our Country Back From the Money Men Who Fund the Tea Party
by: June Carbone

If there is a silver lining to the debt limit crisis — and it’s a big if — it would be that the extremism of Republican agenda has finely become visible to a larger number of Americans. It is time to recognize what it means to face a determined ideological bloc. And what it means to fight back. While New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently described the Tea Party as an American Hezbollah, Islamic terrorists would not have much clout without their funders in Saudi Arabia and Iran. So, too, the Republican right would be impotent without its behind-the-scenes creators. A small number of incredibly wealthy businessmen — the principle beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts — have created an ideological machine determined to destroy government. Taking our country back, restoring pragmatism over ideology, and making government function requires making the deep pocket money men (and they are mostly men) visible and identifying their cause with the looting of the country.

The debt limit gridlock is simply the latest episode in a war on government that has been thirty years in the making. Many of us dismissed the genial, misguided Ronald Reagan as an aberration. We saw the Gingrich revolution as self-destructive and easily contained. We cheered in 2006 and 2008 as we reached that the conclusion that Bush, with his unnecessary wars and the financial crisis that was the predictable consequence of mindless deregulation, had discredited the Republican brand. Some of us voted for Obama over Hillary because we thought that with Bush and political maestro Karl Rove out of the way, Obama could transcend the partisanship of the Clinton years.

We were wrong. What we failed to recognize is the engine of Republican extremism is not Reagan or the second Bush or Gingrich. Nor is it some authentic voice of the Christian right or the disillusioned working class on the American “street.” The engine of conservative ascendance is the ideologically driven money men who have built a single-minded political machine in the United States. In “Winner Take All Politics”, political scientists Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker date the conservative rise to 1978, two years before Reagan. They identify conservative success with the ascendance of the Chamber of Commerce, which became a vehicle for right-wing business interests. They report that since the consolidation and channeling of conservative funding, Republicans have won an astounding 85% of closely fought contests….

In a follow-up to an article about Shell’s complicity in causing environmental damage in Nigeria, here’s a slideshow of 12 photos taken in that region.

Curse of the Black Gold
The cost of oil exploitation. —Photo Essay by Ed Kashi, Text by Michael Watts

Tanker drivers wait for work in the Tank Park of PTD (Petroleum Tanker Drivers) in Warri. Due to the crisis in the Niger Delta, the refinery in Warri has been shut down for production. Many of these drivers have been waiting for three months at this park to get oil products to deliver around Nigeria.

Negative, bay-bee, you and you fellow Teahadists started this fight and Wisconsinites are intent upon not only bringing it to you…but finishing it! And stop trying to blame this on President Obama. Take personal responsibility…you know…like you guys are always advocating for everyone else under the sun. Now, it’s your turn! THAT.IS.ALL….

Wis. GOPer: If You Don’t Like What We Did, Wait For 2012 Instead Of Recalling Me
By: Eric Kleefeld

One of the targeted Republican state Senators in this Tuesday’s Wisconsin recalls, Alberta Darling, is headed into the home stretch with an interesting message: That the recall should not even be happening, and voters who don’t like the policies that have been enacted under Gov. Scott Walker should wait for the 2012 legislative races.

“We have elections. Elections have consequences. If you don’t like what’s happening, make a change in the next election,” DarlingÂ said at a debate on Wednesday, WisPolitics reports. “We did. The (2010) election said, ‘make a change,’ and we did. We flipped the Assembly, the Senate and the governor’s house. And you know what? If you don’t like what we’re doing, go vote in the 2012 elections. We listened to the people in 2010.”

Whatever one’s attitude is about recalls as an idea, one thing is still certain: The state constitution provides for recalls under a process that was triggered through sufficient signatures, so the election is on. As such, it is unclear whether such an argument will do much to attract voters in a race that will rely heavily on both parties turning out their base. In addition, Darling stated in stark terms that the recalls are not truly about state finances, but a political battle centered around President Obama’s 2012 chances.

Hmmm…me thinks maybe if Rick “got some” on a more regular basis he’d be a lot happier and would stop concerning himself with things that are clearly none of his business. And why does the very mention of anything LGBT- related cause people to fixate on the sexual aspects of their relationships–dehumanizing them and not acknowledging that they have everyday concerns related to work, family, and life too…

Rick Santorum is continuing his staunch opposition to gay rights — warning that courts have created a “super-right” to sex, which overrides the constitutional right of religious freedom. In an interview with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board, Santorum claimed that same-sex marriage was a threat to religious liberty, alleging for example that government could threaten the licenses of marriage counselors who don’t treat gay couples.

“Religious liberty is now trumped because we have now created a super-right,” said Santorum. “We have a right [in] the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

Also, the paper reports: “Santorum says if ‘pursuit of happiness’ means ‘pursuit of pleasure,’ we won’t be a country very long.” [Haha…hate to break it to you Rick but you should really check out Benjamin Franklin’s involvement in the Hellfire Club. And I also think the billion dollar porn industry in this country disproves your ridiculous hair-on-fire statement.]

RENTON, Wash. — The Renton City Prosecutor wants to send a cartoonist to jail for mocking the police department in a series of animated Internet videos. The “South-Park”-style animations parody everything from officers having sex on duty to certain personnel getting promoted without necessary qualifications. While the city wants to criminalize the cartoons, First Amendment rights advocates say the move is an “extreme abuse of power.”

Only KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne holds a key document that really lays bare the city’s intent. The document was quietly filed in King County Superior Court last week. It’s a search warrant accusing an anonymous cartoon creator, going by the name of Mr. Fiddlesticks, of cyberstalking (RCW 9.61.260). The Renton Police Department and the local prosecutor got a judge to sign off as a way to uncover the name of whoever is behind the parodies. Halsne talked with three nationally respected legal experts who believe the use of the cyberstalking statute is likely stomping on the constitution.

The series of web-based short cartoons feature a mustachioed street cop and a short-haired female bureaucrat. The dry, at times, witty banter between the two touches on some embarrassing insider secrets, some of which seem to match up with internal affairs investigations on file within Renton PD.

Gunmen open fire on city bus over threat to report child abuse
By David Edwards

Philadelphia prosecutors claim that Penny Champan triggered a violent shooting because a fellow bus passenger threatened to report her for spanking her child. Security camera video shows Chapman making a call on her cell phone shortly after the man threatens to report her for child abuse.

Several minutes later, Chapman exits the bus and several men open fire on the vehicle with an assault rifle and a handgun, according to MyFoxPhilly.com. At least five bullets were fired through the back of the bus and several more came through the side, prosecutors said.

Defense lawyers argued that the gunmen should not have been charged with assault because no one was injured.

REVEALED: BP Is Top Funder Of ALEC Annual Meeting In Oil-Soaked Louisiana
By Brad Johnson

A little more than a year after its negligence led to the despoilment of the Gulf of Mexico, oil giant BP is funding a right-wing lobbying group that opposes regulation of offshore drilling. This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. ALEC is a political corruption group funded by Koch Industries and other corporations to write legislation for state-level Republican legislators. ThinkProgress has obtained a list of the conference’s sponsors, and BP is at the head of the list as a “President” level funder. According to sources, that is likely a $100,000 contribution:

ALEC has pushed hard to fight any limits on offshore drilling, claiming “more energy-efficient drilling and production methods practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms.” ALEC also promotes global warming denial, even claiming that the carbon dioxide pollution produced from burning petroleum is good for you. Other oil and natural gas companies funding the ALEC conference:

On the anniversary of the Gulf disaster, BP celebrated by giving major contributions to Republican politicians. Last month, BP announced “disappointing” profits of $5.6 billion in the last quarter, as it claimed that the Gulf of Mexico has fully recovered from its malfeasance. Oil continues to wash ashore.

Immediately after last month’s terror attacks in Norway, Islamic extremism shot to the top of almost every list of suspected culprits. Among the soothsayers of creeping Shariah, there was never any doubt who was responsible. Others’ more rational, if hasty, assessments of Norway’s threat matrix pointed to the same (wrong) conclusion. For all their differences, both lines of reasoning shared a common assumption: that the sheer volume of Muslim terrorists out there made their involvement likely. Or as Stephen Colbert skewered the media’s rush to judgment: “If you’re pulling a news report completely out of your ass, it is safer to go with Muslim. That’s not prejudice. That’s probability.”

Charles Kurzman begs to differ. In his new book, The Missing Martyrs, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill sociology professor rejects that Muslims are especially prone to violent extremism. “If there are more than a billion Muslims in the world, many of whom supposedly hate the West and desire martyrdom,” he asks, “why don’t we see terrorist attacks everywhere, every day?” In theory, we should. After all, there’s any number of ways a terrorist committed to murdering civilians could attack (and our gun lobby certainly isn’t making weapons harder to get a hold of). But we don’t. No Islamist terrorist attack besides 9/11 has killed more than 400 people; only a dozen have killed more than 200.

As it turns out, there just aren’t that many Muslims determined to kill us. Backed by a veritable army of fact, figures, and anecdotes, Kurzman makes a compelling case. He calculates, for example, that global Islamist terrorists have succeeded in recruiting fewer than 1 in 15,000 Muslims over the past 25 years, and fewer than 1 in 100,000 since 2001. And according to a top counterterrorism official, Al Qaeda originally planned to hit a West Coast target, too, on 9/11 but lacked the manpower to do so.

A pregnant woman in Denver said she had traveled the world with her insulin without any problems, but that all changed when Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) screeners at Denver International Airport confiscated her medication Thursday. “Well, you’re a risk,” she said the agent told her. “This is a risk… I can’t tell you why, again. But this is at risk for explosives.”

“I got a bottle of nail polish,” the mother-to-be told KMGH. “I got hair spray bottles. I got needles that are syringes. But yet I can’t take through my actual insulin?” She explained that the medication was correctly labeled and she provided the TSA with a doctor’s note. Luckily, the agents missed half of a vial buried at the bottom of her lunch box. The TSA website lists insulin as one of the many permitted products for traveling diabetics.

“We are sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screening experience and we invite those individuals to provide feedback to TSA through a variety of channels,” the TSA told KMGH in a statement. “We work to balance those concerns with the very real threat that our adversaries will attempt to use explosives to carry out attacks on planes.”

[Click on link to watch this video from KMGH, broadcast Aug. 4, 2011.]

Al Jazeera English made its United States television debut this week, continuing the network’s transformation in the eyes of the American public and government from dangerous machine to respectable news outlet. The English-language branch of the Arabic news organization has proven itself to be a major voice in world news, and with its American premiere comes the opportunity for increased diversity in the US cable news landscape. The cable network launched at 12:00 am on Monday in New York City. The managing director of Al Jazeera English has said the New York market provides more traffic to the AJE website than any other city in the world, making it a natural place for AJE to begin its operations in the US Whether it will spread to households across the country is yet to be seen, but the simple possibility has media activists and academics hopeful for broader representation in American news.

“We actively encourage and support more voices in the media and more diverse voices in the media,” said Dave Saldana, communications director of Free Press. “Al Jazeera certainly fits both of those bills.” When Al Jazeera English was formed in 2006, an American television channel might have seemed impossible. Made famous in the United States for airing Osama bin Laden’s video-recorded statements in the days, months and years following the September 11 attacks, the network was vilified by the American government.

Al Jazeera was treated as an anti-American propaganda wing for Islamic extremists, and was slandered, monitored, and even bombed by the US. More recently, however, Al Jazeera English has been received more as a highly reputable news source than a pseudo-terrorist operation. “They’ve got some very serious, well-regarded journalists on their payroll doing work in parts of the world where very few Western journalists go” said Saldana. Part of that shift is undoubtedly owed to AJE’s coverage of this year’s freedom movements in North Africa and the Middle East, now colloquially known as the Arab Spring. “The important people in the State Department weren’t looking at CNN or MSNBC or Fox News to find out what was happening in the streets of Tripoli or Cairo” Saldana said. “They were watching Al Jazeera English.”

In the impasse over funding the Federal Aviation Administration, which had idled more than 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers for nearly two weeks, only one Republican sided with the Democrats: Texas’ Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. And in the end, Hutchison, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, was given credit for helping to work out a deal, announced Thursday, that will settle the dispute. “She has played an extraordinary leadership role,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, himself a former Republican congressman who’s now serving a Democratic administration. “I compliment her on her leadership.”

Hutchison hailed the agreement. “This is very welcome news, and I look forward to the FAA once again resuming regular operations, which will benefit travelers, airports, affected businesses and, most importantly, allow furloughed FAA employees to get back to work,” Hutchison said in a statement.

Texas is now in its worst-ever one-year drought, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas State Climatologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. The epic heat wave and lack of rainfall is baking Texas dry, leaving the nation’s second largest agricultural producer reeling. The records set for Texas tell the story of a polluted climate killing the state:

“These statistics rank the current drought as the most severe one-year drought ever for Texas,” Nielsen-Gammon explains. “Never before has so little rain been recorded prior to and during the primary growing season for crops, plants and warm-season grasses.” In coming years, the climate is expected to worsen for Texas, in large part because of the fossilized carbon extracted from underneath the now-dying land. “Triple-digit temperatures will be the norm in Texas within a few decades, and 115-degree heat won’t be surprising,” Nielsen-Gammon warned last year.

The fiscal clown show continues. A few days after Congress and the White House agreed to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending, Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the United States of America’s credit rating from AAA to AA+.

S&P, which covered itself in a substance other than glory during the mortgage crisis, may have a poor record and strange methodology when it comes to sovereign ratings. France, which has a far higher debt per capita ratio than the U.S., still enjoys a AAA rating. And a downgrade, alone, doesn’t mean U.S. interest rates will spike — on Monday or at any time in the future. Japan’s credit rating was downgraded several years ago, when the interest rates its government paid on bonds was already extremely low, and they’ve generally trended lower in the years since.

Market conditions, the trajectory of economic growth and relative value can play as big — if not a bigger — of a role in determining interest rates than a rating.

But that doesn’t mean we should ignore S&P’s Friday evening shot across the bow. In downgrading the U.S.’s credit rating, S&P points out what has long been obvious: Washington’s inability to come to an agreement on how to close the large fiscal gaps that have emerged since the recession began is troubling. Recent events have sapped the agency’s confidence that the government can and will do what is necessary to align revenues with spending commitments. And it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that America’s credit rating was intentionally sabotaged by Congressional Republicans.

The Teabaggers are to blame. The ultimate blame lies with the people who stayed at home during the midterm elections. The teadevils are like little bad children…what more do they have up there sleeves over the next year. What can you say when they loose they checks? You shoulda voted?

The Rethugs are blaming OBAMA…this surprises no one. Those looser political presidential unhopefuls were quick to pounce. They will NEVER be able to win the presidency whether not narry one more job is created. They can’t win, period. #loosers

Remember when the president suddenly offered the Republicans a grand bargain on deficit reduction and put entitlements on the table if the Republicans would only consider eliminating tax loopholes for private jet owners and other millionaires? Remember how so many progressives howled about the betrayal? Imagine what the world would like today if the president had not taken that step.

A cornerstone of the global financial system was shaken Friday when officials at ratings firm Standard & Poor’s said U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world.
S&P removed for the first time the triple-A rating the U.S. has held for 70 years, saying the budget deal recently brokered in Washington didn’t do enough to address the gloomy outlook for America’s finances. It downgraded long-term U.S. debt to AA+, a score that ranks below more than a dozen governments’, including Liechtenstein’s, and on par with Belgium’s and New Zealand’s…

…The downgrade from S&P has been brewing for months. S&P’s sovereign debt team, led by company veteran David T. Beers, had grown increasingly skeptical that Washington policy makers would make significant progress in reducing the deficit, given the tortured talks over raising the debt ceiling. In recent warnings, the company said Washington should strive to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, suggesting anything less would be insufficient.

Negotiations to reach that threshold collapsed, and political leaders instead agreed to a last-second deal to cut the deficit by between $2.1 trillion and $2.4 trillion, making a downgrade almost unavoidable. When the $4 trillion deal fell apart, some Obama administration officials immediately warned that a downgrade from S&P was a real possibility.

You have probably been subjected to an endless litany from progressives that this was all a fake crisis and that we don’t really have a debt problem. That was never true. We do have a debt problem. We have a debt problem because Standard & Poor has come to the conclusion that we’ll never be able to raise revenues. The Republicans’ ideology has ruined our credit rating. The president could have been blamed for this downgrade if he hadn’t shown a willingness to put entitlements on the table. In that case, both sides would be equally to blame. But the president wisely took the necessary action to protect our credit rating, and he was rebuffed when Eric Cantor and then John Boehner walked out of the negotiations.

Columbia County (Wisc.) GOP chair resigns after drunken crash with her children in the car

The chairwoman of the Republican Party of Columbia County resigned Friday after a drunken crash with her three children in her car.

Amber Hahn, 35, of rural Poynette, said she crashed her car Thursday night while driving drunk, but that no one was hurt and that no other vehicles were involved. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene from the OnStar alert in her car, she said.

This morning, Fox & Friends hosted an “upset Wisconsin parent” to discuss her objection to Wisconsin public schools’ teaching of labor union history. Left unsaid during the segment: The parent, Amber Hahn, is also a local GOP official.

Fox & Friends, which asked last week if teaching labor history in Wisconsin schools is “pro-union propaganda,” used the interview with Hahn to renew its attacks. A graphic that aired during the segment asked if Wisconsin schools are “pushing the union agenda,” and co-host Gretchen Carlson asked Hahn if she thought the lessons on unions are “biased.”

A NATO helicopter crashed during an operation against the Taliban near the Afghan capital late Friday night, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai says 31 U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed. NATO has not confirmed the deaths.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – The Standard & Poor’s rating agency served the Obama administration with notice Friday afternoon that it planned to downgrade the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating, an administration official told CNN.

But S&P has yet to make its ruling public, and the source told CNN the agency is reconsidering after the administration challenged S&P’s analysis of the government’s finances.

Jack Barnes writes : Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday – a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating.

In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world.

The massive trade wasn’t placed in bonds themselves; it was placed in the futures market.

The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures executed at 125-01.

The value of the trade was about $850 million dollars. In simple terms, if that was a direct bond buy, no one would be talking about it.

However, with the use of futures, you have to have margin capacity behind the trade. That means with a single push of a button someone was willing to commit more than $1 billion of real capital to this trade with expectations of a 10-to-1 return ratio.

You only do this if you see an edge.

This means someone is confident that the United States is either going to default or is going to lose its AAA rating. That someone is willing to bet the proverbial farm that U.S. interest rates will be going up.

I believe what happened is a debt-ceiling deal was done in Washington and leaked to a major proprietary trader. Everyone knows the debt negotiations in Washington have been an extreme game of brinksmanship between political parties, but now someone knows how that game played out.

This had the hallmarks of one of the largest bond shops in the world knowing something the rest of the market didn’t.

The number of shops or even central banks that can take on this level of market risk is extremely small. Some that come to mind are hedge fund manager John Paulson, Bill Gross’s PIMCO, and the U.S. and Chinese central banks.

Paulson already scored big – about $6 billion big – on a similar trade years ago when he bet against subprime mortgages, the investments that helped bring down Lehman Bros. and many other investors.

Whoever was behind it wanted a trade on ASAP, and didn’t care about the ripples they would cause.

Flickr Photos

Potus Takes Oath of Office

Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China

My Brothers Keeper

AFRO PUFFS

Most Adorable Shoe Stealer

Six Little Babies

Fatherhood

Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.